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That means the earliest an Ontario election could be held is next spring.

The day after auditor general Bonnie Lysyk concluded it could cost taxpayers up to $815 million to shutter the Oakville electricity station — on top of the previous $275 million tab for the Mississauga facility — Hudak said it’s time to topple the Grits.

“It’d be pretty hard for the Liberals not to call an election if the NDP supported our confidence motion,” Hudak insisted Wednesday.

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But NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, whose party has propped up the Liberals for the past two years, quickly shot down his election balloon.

“It is pretty clear that there’s nothing that can be done at this point to force an election unless the Liberals call it themselves. So Mr. Hudak can stand on his head and spit nickels, but it is not going to create an election in Ontario,” said Horwath.

“I don’t have the power to force an election. Mr. Hudak doesn’t have the power to force an election, and to pretend that either one of us do is absolutely inappropriate,” she said, stressing she’s wants to “get results for Ontarians” in the minority legislature.

“An election will eventually come.”

Government House leader John Milloy noted that — unlike Ottawa, where a federal minority government can be defeated if opposition parties force a confidence vote — “it’s a different system here and it’s based on consensus.”

Thanks to former Tory premier Bill Davis, who changed the legislature’s standing orders in 1978, all three parties have to agree for an opposition confidence motion to reach the floor of the house.

Right now, only the Conservatives are eager for that to happen.

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Milloy said there is no appetite from the Liberals to dissolve the legislature.

“From our vantage point, the house is working, legislation is getting passed,” he said.

A confidence vote is therefore not expected in the house until Finance Minister Charles Sousa introduces the budget next March or April, setting the stage for a possible May 29 election.

While Premier Kathleen Wynne was again contrite Wednesday about the “mistakes made” when the Liberals’ cancelled the two gas plants before the 2011 election, her predecessor was unrepentant.

After testifying at the judicial inquiry into the Elliot Lake mall collapse, former premier Dalton McGuinty, whose resignation last October was sparked by the controversy, said he regretted only that his decision cost so much.

“I regret the fact that we hadn’t acted sooner as a government, but it is right to relocate those plants,” said McGuinty, noting local residents understandably opposed the power facilities.

The Oakville station was supposed to have been built by TransCanada Energy, which is now being compensated for a number of factors — including the additional cost of shipping natural gas to Napanee, 240 kilometres away. It was the Liberals who insisted the plant go there.

Indeed, Lysyk’s 24-page report depicted problems from start to finish with the Ontario Power Authority approving the Oakville site despite local opposition.

The $815 million tally to axe Oakville and move it to Napanee includes $675 million for gas turbines and transmission system upgrades and a possible $140 million to ship natural gas there.

The auditor general, who will testify Thursday before a legislative committee probing the debacle, said her estimate was greater than OPA’s $310 million released last spring because she used different actuarial assumptions.

However, the power authority maintains its lower forecast was accurate.

The two generating stations were scrapped to save five Liberal seats in the last election: Oakville; Mississauga South; Mississauga East—Cooksville; Etobicoke—Lakeshore; and Etobicoke Centre.

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